​And there he was all over Facebook, a Dutch ethnic politician speaking to his ethnic constituency behind close doors, asking them to vote for his newly founded political party, after he left another newly founded political party. The main message was this: people of his ethnicity were lower on the other party’s list than people of another ethnicity, and that, he won’t accept: “ not on my watch!”. What a drama, and what a reason to leave a political party and start another. God forbid that someone from ethnicity A will have a lower place on an electoral list than someone from ethnicity B or C, especially if it is a list that led by people from another minority group and defends the equality for all in the face of racism and colonialism. No way, that we cannot tolerate. If it was a “normal” political party, meaning a party led by white Europeans, then there is no problem.

This is really dramatic, and above all symptomatic for the place where identity politics stands today. Let me start by saying that Identity politics today is becoming the dominant political current, first and foremost, among white Europeans and westerners in general. Identity politics is no more a vehicle of emancipation that is used by oppressed people in the third world. It became mainly the narrative of the antiglobalist white nationalists. On the other side of the spectrum, whenever identity politics produces a politicising narrative of emancipation and a counter-discourse aiming at countering white supremacy, I do salute it. Regardless of whether I believe it is the best strategy to address the question of liberation and equality today, it remains a legitimate form of cultural and political resistance. But lately, identity politics among minorities in Belgium and the Netherlands is becoming a narrative aiming against other minorities, and de facto, in service of white supremacy. I saw Arabs and Turks practicing the racist tradition of Black Piet proudly. I heard Surinamians expressing Islamophobic sentiment. I read about other Surinamians, mainly with Hindustani background, professing that they will vote for the PVV (Dutch far right party). It was explained to me how Indos (Indoniasian-Dutch) resent other minorities because they believe these minorities were and are spoiled by the Dutch state while Indo’s had a hard knock process of immigration, and so on. Not to mention the conflictual relations between Turks and Kurds, Arabs and Berbers, Sunnis and Shias, and many more divisions. Looking at this fragmented picture among ethnic minorities, it may then seem that undergoing white supremacy through assimilation (often called integration) is the only option to preserve social peace and harmony. This feeling is very latently, and sometimes explicitely, present among members of minority groups. For as much as we despise racism and assimilation and white supremacy, many of us keep seeking refuge under its dominion and within its mechanisms. This is similar to the idea that is often uttered about colonialism, occupation, and dictatorship: if the occupier or oppressor is gone, the people will kill each other and destroy their country. So it is logically better to be occupied, colonized and oppressed, because it will at least preserve the peace. What people don’t see is that oppression itself, in any form, foreign and domestic, is what keeps the people ignorant, poor, marginalised, nervous, aggressive, and at each other’s throats. This is the effect of oppression and this is how it perpetuates itself and builds its legitimacy. So we also believe, as members of minorities that we only can find peace and prosperity when subjugated to the rule of a racist establishment that is inherently white supremacist. And when we try to turn our back on that establishment we soon reproduce its own mechanisms of segregation and subjugation through a hidden and non-emancipatory version of identity politics that attacks other minorities and perpetuates stereotypes against them.You cannot fight racism with racial prejudice. You cannot fight supremacists with an alternative supremacy. I believe that it doesn’t work, and that it backfires. But even if it did work, I refuse to be part of such dynamics. I do not want to fight fire with fire. I do not want to fight divisiveness with more divisiveness. I just cannot do this and be honest with myself. For me it is very personal. I am born and raised in Lebanon, to a Muslim father who is a secularist leftist, and to a believing Christian Maronite Catholic mother. I am culturally a Muslim and a Christian, both are my heritage, you can love me or hate me for that depending on how you stand on this. And yet, I am myself agnostic, and at the same time spiritual, you can also love or hate me for that. Arab culture is deeply rooted in me, and is something that I practice and live every day, but I cannot deny that European culture is also part of who I am and has a big influence on me. Hate me or love me for both, I don’t care. I speak Arabic, but I also speak Dutch and French and English, and I use all these languages actively and daily, and I even dream in all of them. You want to integrate me in your culture? You want to encapsulate me? You think you can? You think your culture is enough for me? While I think it is not even enough for you? You want to define me, and people like me in your categories of normality? You want to classify me on your rankings and lists? The truth is, when it comes to identity, and whoever you are, I am a bundle of everything you like and everything you dislike. And I have news for you, I am not alone in this, people like me are legion, they are a growing minority that will soon become a majority. We come in all colours and from all backgrounds, and we are everything you hate and everything you love at the same time. As we celebrate hybridity, we also cherish our identities, not as a prison that limits us, not as separation walls, real or imaginary, not as exclusions and bans on other people, but as many faces of one human civilisation. You better have people like us on your list, and you better put them on top.